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Jewish World Review May 21, 2002 / 9 Sivan, 5762

Cal Thomas

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Consumer Reports

Needed: an intelligent investigation

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | It is appropriate for the proper intelligence oversight committees in Congress to investigate the Sept. 11 terrorist attack, as the objective is to discover if there were intelligence breakdowns and repair any flaws to better protect us in the future. But if Democrats, especially, think this is the issue they've been searching for to deflate President Bush's high approval ratings (Enron, Social Security, education, tax cuts and political fundraising through picture sales having failed them), they had better heed the advice of former Bill Clinton adviser and JWR contributor Dick Morris.

Interviewed on Fox News Channel last Friday (May 17), Morris warned fellow Democrats that they would be doing Bush a favor by politicizing the war on terrorism. The president, said Morris, could then ask voters to send more Republican reinforcements to the Senate and House to replace those who won't stand united against America's common enemy. Having abandoned bipartisanship, Morris believes Democrats would then be vulnerable to a political counterstrike by Republicans on their strongest post 9/11 issue: patriotism. Democrats need to "hug the opposition on their best issues," advised Morris.

After opening the war on terrorism to political examination, Democrats run the risk of exposing their own party, including former Democrat presidents, to culpability in any intelligence failures. John R. Bolton, now undersecretary of State for arms control, noted in a May 16, 1999 column in The Washington Times: "(President) Clinton has consistently mismanaged what should have been, for any administration, the primary obligation of stewardship for the country's intelligence capabilities....From the start, the president himself has never shown much interest in intelligence matters. He is the first president in memory not to receive morning briefings directly from the Central Intelligence Agency along with his daily copy of the written 'President's Daily Brief.' Even today, CIA briefers rarely see (President Clinton) personally."

Did this indifference to intelligence lead to the first World Trade Center attack in 1993 and the mistaken 1999 U.S. bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, not to mention our "surprise" over India's nuclear testing in 1998? Did it make 9/11 inevitable? Inquiring congressional minds will want to know.

A 1997 essay for Studies in Intelligence by Defense Intelligence Agency analyst Russ Travers offered a balanced critique of the decline in American intelligence gathering. In his commentary, presciently titled "The Coming Intelligence Failure," Travers found fault in the Executive and Legislative branches, as well as the Intelligence Community.

In the Executive Branch, Travers suggested that U.S. national security policy had been more reactive than anticipatory: "Any attempt to program resources according to consumer needs is a recipe for getting whipsawed from crisis to crisis and cannot be sustained."

Congress also "will bear some responsibility for our forthcoming intelligence failure," wrote Travers, four years before 9/11. He cited the congressional push for a division of labor in the IC which has "significantly diminished competitive analysis (of data) within the Community and should, therefore, be seen as an acceptance of increased risk." Travers added, "By operating under the premise that we can divide intelligence analysis into military, economic and political subcomponents and then parcel out discrete responsibilities to various agencies, we are sowing the seeds for inevitable mistakes." This "artificial distinction" had not existed before, Travers noted, and "we are setting ourselves up to do bad political, economic and military analysis; by implication, support to all our consumers is going to get worse."

Further, "a combination of bureaucratic politics and self-inflicted wounds within the IC will prove to be critical factors responsible for our failure," Travers wrote.

These are some of the areas where any investigation of intelligence failures should focus. To suggest, as some Democrats are, that President Bush put thousands of lives at risk by ignoring specific and credible evidence of an imminent attack on the United States by Islamic extremists flies in the face of the character and moral strength an overwhelming majority of Americans have come to admire in this man, especially since 9/11.

If Democrats want to pursue such a strategy, Republicans should not stand in their way. It might return the Senate to Republican control and probably widen the GOP majority in the House.


JWR contributor Cal Thomas is the author of, among others, The Wit and Wisdom of Cal Thomas Comment by clicking here.

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